Stretchable and Conformal Electronics Report 2017 - Market for Materials
and Components for Stretchable Electronics Will be Over $600m by 2027 -
Research and Markets

The electronic industry is in the midst of a major paradigm shift: novel
form factors are emerging ranging from limited flexibility to
ultra-elastic and conformable electronics. This transfiguration has, of
course, been in the making for more than a decade now, but it is only
now that it is beginning to make a substantial commercial impact.

This shift is not an incremental or a sustaining technology that
furthers technology performance along well-established industry lines.
Instead, it seeks to create new functions, new applications, and new
users. As such, this technology frontier currently only has vague
figures-of-merit and limited insight on customer needs.

Indeed, many opponents have long argued that this entire class of
emerging materials/devices is a classic case of technology-push, a
solution looking for a problem. This view may have been right in the
early days, but we now see this trend as an essential step towards the
inevitable endgame of new electronics: structural electronics.

Structural electronics is a disruptive megatrend that will transform
traditional electronics from being components-in-a-box into truly
invisible electronics that part of the structure. This is a major
long-term innovation that we lead to a root-and-branch change of the
electronic industry including its value chain, its materials, its
components, and so on. Stretchable and conformable electronics is giving
shape to this megatrend. Indeed, it enables it.